Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time.

This remote/trackpad app is by far one of the handiest bits of iOS software I’ve experienced thus far. The particular situation I experience that makes this app such a great fit is when I hook up my Macbook Pro to my wall-mounted plasma to play Hulu or some other web-based media. It’s a situation that isn’t hardy enough to warrant busting out the wireless keyboard and mouse, so being able to use my iPhone in that fashion rocks!

The app is only $1.99, which I think is completely worth it for the functionality that it offers. The server software also runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X.

Being the proud new owner of a Kindle book reader, I’ve recently rediscovered my love for reading (after switching wholesale to audiobooks, which I still listen to). Brian (a.k.a. seventyfourmanx), pointed me an eBook Trifecta:

With Stanza and Drinkmalk, you have access to a huge catalog of eBooks that you can download to your phone and then sync to your desktop. When I started this Kindle craze, I was a little worried about having to re-purchase all of my books in eBook format. So far, I’ve found what I needed at Drinkmalk. (As a disclaimer, I’m not encouraging you to pirate books. I already own physical copies of these books and am just looking to have them available digitally.) The Drinkmalk library is only accessible via Stanza. Luckily, Stanza has the ability to offload those books from your phone.

The main star of this post, though, is Calibre. Calibre handles translation of eBook formats and maintenance of your eBook library. Its main feature is the ability to translate eBook formats. In my own library, I had EPUB and PDF versions of books. I was able to translate those into the Kindle’s MOBI format and copy them to the Kindle all within the app.

You can also add metadata to your eBooks such as cover images, author, ratings, ISBN, etc. This comes in especially handy when you are browsing through the plethora of free eBook libraries such as:

I started a project not long ago to convert my physical DVD library into a digital movie library. One of the things I used to obsess over is entering every bit of meta data for each video file. Now with two kids, I slowly fell off that bandwagon.

I use Flickr as my online photo archiving tool. As such, I have about 27k photos uploaded ranging back to 1999. Sometimes, I want to put together a collection of photos to print or upload into a different gallery. Putting those photos in a set in Flickr is much faster than digging through my DVD archives.

Now, instead of downloading each photo individually in a set, I can download the entire set with a few clicks using Photo Grabbr (for Mac).

All those $0.99 apps in the iTunes App Store make impulse purchases irresistible. It’s easy to rationalize (hey, gum is more expensive), and therefore, very dangerous.

The App Store Expense Monitor is a handy, free app that scans your mobile application directory and looks up the prices of all the apps you’ve purchased. Granted, it looks up the current prices, so anything you might’ve gotten free or for sale won’t reflect such. You can edit the prices if you want, though.

Even with the inflated total, I still can’t believe how much I’ve spent on apps.